


Leave No Trace (Exception)

by Aja



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Community: inceptiversary, M/M, inceptiversary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7401031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the rules of dreamshare: Get in, get out, leave no trace behind. </p><p>Eames knows the rules, and he follows them.</p><p>Until he doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave No Trace (Exception)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for last year's Inceptiversary fanbook but since the project seems to be sadly awol ;_; i am giving up and posting it now. With thanks to Weatherfront for the regulard beta and the Outkast earworm, and Inception fandom for ~~five~~ _six!!!!_ years of wonder and delight.

Eames knows the rules of dreamshare the way he knows his own name—less conscious thought by now than a thrum beneath his skin, beneath the interminable charm and the sleight-of-hand and the dozens of felony misdemeanors Eames commits in a given day. Some of them he pre-dates; others you might say he helped codify. They aren’t pretty, but they have saved him more than once, and they will again. Anyone who doesn’t carry them close to the chest will be out before long, one way or another. 

Eames knows the rules, and he follows them.

Until he doesn’t.

 

  1. **Get in, get out, leave no trace behind.**



The only way to do extraction is clean. Always has been—until Inception left something behind. Still, hell of a good time. And after all, what’s an exception unless it’s huge? 

Six months on, a young extractor pauses after having cleanly extracted an NDA from the center of a mark’s subconscious. He whistles, a dog that looks like Toto bounces up out of nowhere, and Eames is so unnerved he nearly shoots the extractor again topside.

“Chill, dude!” says the extractor, a Silicon Valley nerd who stumbled into dreamshare through Oculus Rift. He comes highly recced, but he reminds Eames of Cobb, too recklessly glib. “I was just, like, signing my work.”

Eames must be getting old, because he thinks of tail-wagging Toto and just can’t be arsed to care. “On you when she can’t stop watching  _ Wizard of Oz _ ,” he says, shrugging.

A few months later, he’s on Arthur’s level just long enough to tease him into a state of distracted rage, find a frayed thread on the cuff of his overpriced suit, and summon a friend from the NatGeo special Arthur couldn’t help watching the previous night, the little dork.

“Did you just project a  _ lemur  _ into my mind?” Arthur says, trying for supreme annoyance but failing because a lemur is perching on his shoulder. He’s feeding it a plum he created. Eames is oddly pleased.

“Consider it a gift,” Eames says. He thinks Arthur looks oddly pleased as well.

 

  1. **Scatter.**



So: get in, get out, leave no trace behind, and when it’s done, scatter. Of course Inception turns the third bit topsy-turvy, but the others are commandments.

When he finds himself still in Barcelona the day after the job, he should be more alarmed. He's fidgety, expecting Arthur to call and ask what the fuck he's thinking. 

Arthur calls instead to say, "If you're gonna be here awhile, come help me move this couch," and Eames realizes with horror that he stuck around  _ because _ he was waiting for Arthur to call.

He moves the couch, then fucks Arthur on it. “Why didn’t you scatter?” he asks later, fingers against Arthur’s collarbone. Arthur cranes his neck.

“I live here,” he says. Eames wonders if it’s dreamshare or the two of them that mellowed in adulthood. 

 

  1. **Never build from memory.**



“Wait, Eames,” says Ariadne, “This isn’t what I designed. The hills are to the east, there’s terracing and—uh, goats?”

Arthur scoffs somewhere off to his left. “You asshole. This is Bucovina. You seriously can’t let that go?” Eames beams.

“My subconscious clearly wants you to have a second chance at getting stuck in a scenic mountain village.” To Ariadne, he stage-whispers, “He passed it by the last time because he didn’t trust me when I said I’d clocked our last tail in Tiraspol. We could have had tea in a monastery!”

“Maybe I just didn’t want to get stuck with you,” Arthur says, coming over. Eames eyes him, wordless.

“In a place without public wi-fi,” Arthur relents.

 

  1. **Always leave a man behind.**



This is the rule that trips up the best of men, but Eames has always been clear. Get in, get out, leave no trace behind, and when it’s done, scatter. The danger of staying in a dream too long is not that you forget what’s real, but that you forget who you were. Eames has seen more people than he cares to remember make the mistake of going back to retrieve someone who was already lost. Even the ones who did manage to pull someone else out—they were never fit for dreaming again, Cobb and Saito perhaps most of all.

But Eames always knows who he is; and so he goes down after Arthur.

No, that’s not exactly true; it implies consideration, when really it’s nothing but helplessness trying to claw its way out of his throat. He drops into the sharp clean debris of Arthur’s mind, hoping it will make way for him. 

Leaving a souvenir behind in someone else’s mind is nothing like bringing every trace of yourself in, and nothing again like diving into limbo. Arthur’s limbo is full of miles of perfectly planned city blocks, and, further outside of the city, evenly manicured lawns in healthy eco-friendly subdivisions. It’s all so very  _ Arthur _ ; but later, much later, when Eames has hotwired a bike and ridden through the endless grids of streets and gated communities, he meets the woods. Arthur’s woods are full of sunlight and long, even rows of lush green evergreens, but the pines fling their needles at him and slice him into ribbons, over and over. Sometimes Arthur leaves him an axe with which to chop down murderous trees, but more often he doesn’t; Eames dies and returns, dies and returns, and through it all he thinks,  _ Arthur, Arthur, Arthur _ , until it’s the only thing he really thinks at all anymore.

And then, abruptly, there he is.

Eames comes upon him in a sudden clearing in the middle of the woods, an open grove full of bright green grass untouched by the shadows behind the protective circle of spruce trees. Arthur sits by a bright flowing stream, his hair neatly in place and his suit just the same as the one he is wearing somewhere topside, far far above. The lack of change in him roots Eames in place, uncertain, until he registers the music rising from the clearing. Arthur has an assortment of wine glasses spread out before him on the bank, each full of different levels of water. Eames has seen him play glasses like these before, topside, running his finger over the rims in smooth circles and giving off low, steady, barely audible vibrations. Arthur isn’t touching these glasses, but Eames hears them anyway, rising in volume and intensity, steadily trapping him in a bubble of sound.

Arthur turns and looks at him, and Eames feels fear shoot through him at the thought Arthur might not recognize him; but Arthur looks at him, then meaningfully at the glasses in front of them.

“Arthur,” he says. Arthur doesn’t answer. “We can end the music now, if you like,” Eames tries. Arthur looks back at him, hesitant.

“It’s okay,” says Eames. “Do you trust me?”

Arthur nods, so easily fear spikes through Eames again for an entirely different reason.

“Then you can help,” he says. He lifts the nearest glass. It doesn’t stop humming until he dashes it against the ground and chucks the pieces into the water.

When all the glasses are broken, and the deep hum all around them has ceased, the silence is almost shocking. Arthur gets to his feet, looks around him, and says, “Those fucking overtones, Jesus. Thanks.”

“Can we go now?” Eames asks.

“Wait,” says Arthur, and he steps in and kisses him, deep and a little sloppy.

_ Oh _ , Eames thinks.

“Yeah,” says Arthur. “Let’s get out of here.”

  
  


  1. **Never shit where you eat.**



Granted this one is really more of a guideline, Eames thinks, sinking his teeth into the flesh of Arthur’s inner thigh. Arthur gasps and tugs at his hair, his even nails pricking Eames’ scalp and prompting an eyeroll. “You really have missed this,” he mutters when Arthur tries to commandeer Eames’ mouth towards his erection.

“False,” says Arthur, slightly breathless. “This is just about getting the most efficient labor from the parts available.”

“You assume all my parts are actually at your disposal,” says Eames. He’s kneeling between Arthur’s legs but looks up when Arthur’s fingers trace his jawline.

“Yeah,” Arthur says, his face all softness. “I do.”  
  


  1. **Never touch another person’s totem.**



“Toss me my die, would you? It’s in the inside pocket,” Arthur says.

Eames falters. He sits down on the bed—how long since they dropped the pretense of a two-bedroom suite?—and fumbles with Arthur’s tailored jacket, fingers trembling as they dig out the die. It feels like any other die, and he tries with an almost paranoid urgency not to notice any of its surface details, or how its weight lies in his hands, for the few seconds he holds it before throwing it too casually over to Arthur. 

Arthur looks up as he catches it. “Thanks,” he says, clever eyes narrowing, and Eames can see the precise moment when he decides not to make an issue out of whatever’s happening on Eames’ face. 

Something painful twinges in Eames’ chest, and to stave off having a second life crisis in as many minutes, he stands and goes to Arthur. He tucks his arm around Arthur’s waist and presses his nose into Arthur’s neck.

Arthur stops bundling his ridiculous mountain of identical gray socks and relaxes against him. “Hey,” he says. Eames tightens his hold and breathes him in.  
  


  1. **Don’t talk about Fight Club.**



Eames probably could have speculated that Arthur would bring spreadsheets to a drone fight; but when he’s done very reasonably explaining to Eames that he wants out, and the only way he knows to do it is to take dreamshare with him, and that he’s been stockpiling documentation on Project Somnacin for the last nine years, and Eames asks, “Why tell me?” he couldn’t have anticipated the fond, sad smile Arthur gives him in response.

They’re on the spit of some godforsaken island in the middle of the Chesapeake. Arthur had pegged this as the least likely nearby spot to be scoped out by drones or satellites or actual humans. So this is where everything ends, on a desolate stretch of sand next to the backwash of the Atlantic.

Eames can’t bear thinking about Arthur having to disappear for years and years, forever on the run, without Eames to come snap him out of his self-imposed isolation. Maybe it’s worth something that Arthur wanted to say goodbye first. 

“I thought we could do it together,” Arthur says.

“You want me to take down dreamshare with you,” Eames says. “Then go on the lam forever like a pair of less interview-happy Snowdens.”

“Yes,” says Arthur. 

“Not a chance.” 

“Okay.”

“No,” says Eames. “Not okay.”

“It’s fine,” Arthur says. “I don’t expect you to come with me. But I didn’t want to go without asking.”

It’s perfectly logical; if Arthur hadn’t, Eames would have tracked him down to ask why not. 

“I want you to know either way,” Arthur says.

“What’s that?” Eames asks, mouth dry, fists clenched.

And Arthur says: 

“I think you’re the reason I’ve stayed this long.”

 

 

 

Years ago, Eames explained the rules of dreamshare to a skeptical young extractor who rolled her eyes at him the entire time. Finally, he broke off and muttered, “By all means, share the joke.”

“Rules of dreamshare,” Mal said, laughter peppering her vowels along the way. “Please. Those aren’t rules set down by some mysterious governing committee. They’re  _ your _ rules for self-preservation.” 

“Well,” Eames bristled, stung at the dismissal, “They’ve saved my life more than once, whatever they may be.”

“Darling,” said Mal, “Keeping these rules won’t save your life. Breaking them will.”

And maybe it always was that simple, Eames thinks, tucking Arthur’s hand in his as he sleeps on the plane.  Arthur huffs and curls into him, placid and unafraid.

After all: 

What’s an exception to the rule unless it’s huge?


End file.
